The Elizabeth Line's New Tunnel Service Starts Exactly Two Years From Today

It feels like it has been under construction for forever, but as of today, there's officially only two years to go until the planned opening of the massive new Crossrail tunnel under central London.

This won't be the first part of the Elizabeth Line to go live: In May next year, the Shenfield to Liverpool Street line, which is currently branded as "TfL Rail" will be transformed into the first stage of Elizabeth Line services. But the trains won't go into the tunnels and travel all the way to Paddington until the 9th December 2018. And let's face it: That's the exciting bit.

The full line - from Reading and Heathrow to Shenfield and Abbey Wood, will be fully up and running a year later, in December 2019.

A couple of months ago, Giz UK got a chance to take a look at the works at Liverpool Street, and what's clear is that the project is clearly starting to look like something resembling a railway. The digging appears to be complete, and now it is 'simply' a case of fitting out the tunnels and stations, and then presumably testing the trains to make sure they stop when they should stop, and so on.